Fists give way to firearms

It is the early hours of a Sunday in the back streets of south-western Sydney.

Ali Khaled is deep in a loud argument with his girlfriend, Shamiran Benjamin, who is parked in her Nissan Pulsar outside his Wiley Park home.

Their 3am slanging match quickly earns the ire of those in the low-rise red-brick apartments and battered fibro homes around them and one neighbour eventually opens a window and yells at the pair to keep it down. But that only angers Khaled more.

The 25-year-old turns his anger on the intervening neighbour and the confrontation quickly escalates to the point where Khaled pulls out a small, loaded Glock pistol.

Without hesitation he cocks his gun, points it in the direction of his neighbour's unit and fires a single shot. The bullet hits just underneath the terrified neighbour's window.

Khaled then gets in his girlfriend's car and they speed off but only get as far as the M5 motorway before they are stopped by police and arrested.

There are extra patrols out in Sydney's west this January night after a spate of nine shootings in just eight days.

The couple are among the first arrested and charged by Operation Spartan, a taskforce launched by police in January 2012 to curb the gun violence erupting across the city.

Over the next 12 months, police make another 114 arrests and laid 1114 charges. But the shootings have not stopped.

There has been more than one public shooting every three days in Sydney in that year and the target is increasingly becoming human life. Among the 135 recorded incidents in the past 12 months, eight men have been shot dead and dozens more injured.

Khaled was recently convicted and sentenced to four years in prison for his hot-headed outburst yet he is part of a growing trend that is alarming police and community leaders in Sydney's west, who have seen bouts of gun violence come and go.

They say young men are now arming themselves with illegal guns to fight the most petty of disputes, driving a spike in public shootings proving difficult to keep under control.

''We see houses shot at in the dead of night by cowards and people are getting hurt,'' the acting Police Commissioner, Nick Kaldas, told Fairfax Media this week.

''It appears to have become more acceptable to use a gun to settle a difference rather than, say, physical force or a punch. There is definitely an idiot factor in many of these shootings, but just as with shootings involving organised crime, a person is targeted for whatever reason.''

Public shootings and drive-bys are not new to Sydney.

It was the late 1990s when the city began to be exposed to ''young men doing things with guns'' that they had not done before, the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research director, Don Weatherburn, says.

Before that, shootings were predominantly carried out by big-time crime bosses or jealous jilted lovers.

The frequency of the incidents fluctuated over the years as new conflicts broke out between rival organised crime groups or bikie gangs.

Tensions between rival crime groups in the late 1990s fuelled problems around Cabramatta, while drive-bys and shootings hit another peak as gangs around Telopea Street in Punchbowl erupted and the infamous Darwiche and Razzak families fought out bloody gun battles believed to have been sparked by two marriage breakdowns, drug turf and a spat in a Bankstown cafe.

There were further spikes in 2002 and November 2008.

''Every time it looks like the problem has been knocked on the head, or going down, it comes back up again,'' Weatherburn says. ''That's the pattern. Now we are smack bang in the middle of another rise.''

But this time it is different. Previous shooting spates were attributed to disputes and turf wars between crime families or bikie gangs bent on settling long-running scores.

Now, young men with no affiliations to either are arming themselves with illegal guns to settle feuds as insignificant as a misguided compliment or a fight at a party.

The shootings have become more indiscriminate, making the task more difficult for police trying to crack down on the violence.

Detectives can no longer just target two or three groups, instead they are left investigating a broader, unconnected series of incidents.

One senior police officer says young men will even use a shooting spate as an opportunity to carry out their own, in the belief they will fly under the radar and police will link it to other incidents.

Police call them the ''idiot factor''. A former assistant commissioner, Clive Small, labels them the ''would-be gangsters of the future''.

''They are trying to make a name of themselves but increasingly what we are seeing is … family feuds, individual feuds, low-level petty arguments resulting in people pulling a gun,'' Small says. ''It used to all be about territory, drugs, money.''

In the past year, there were shootings triggered by bickering between two housewives in a supermarket, a compliment directed towards another man's wife and an argument in a hairdresser over Syrian politics.

''The community down here is very hot blooded and they don't forget things very easily,'' a south-western Sydney criminal figure says. ''There's a lot of tit-for-tat.''

Despite what the Underbelly series may have people believe, Small said it had become a phenomenon endemic to Sydney.

''If you look at Melbourne you have more of that gangster approach,'' he says. ''You still have a sense of order down there and you have recognised bosses and that, I think, keeps a level of control. Today in Sydney it's every man for themselves.''

The young men turning to guns across south-western and western Sydney are a product of a downtrodden society, their communities say. They are often unemployed, bored, frustrated, discriminated against and highly disaffected, with little else to do.

Albert Darwiche, whose family was involved in an eight-year conflict with the Razzak family that ended with five people dead and numerous houses shot at, says many of those involved in this wave of shootings are second-generation Middle Eastern men.

Their parents' generation lived with strict family hierarchies yet many of these men have been ''Australianised,'' Darwiche says, ''and have lost the custom of listening to and respecting their parents. When conflicts arise, they prefer to sort it out themselves.

''In the old days, it used to be the fathers that would sit down and talk about it but now they hide it all from their parents.''

The president of the Lebanese Muslim Association, Samir Dandan, says the government has left western Sydney behind.

It is a view shared by respected community leader Dr Jamal Rifi who says consecutive governments have allowed the area to languish with little infrastructure, ghetto-like areas and a sense of lawlessness.

Yet the biggest problem, police say, is these disaffected young men can get their hands on a gun so easily. ''Whether it's young men or others in criminal groups, if they are getting access to guns and as long as those guns are out there we are going to see shootings,'' Kaldas says.

About 12 to 14 months ago, police noticed it had become much easier to obtain an illegal handgun in Sydney than it had in the past.

The Commander of the Firearms and Organised Crime Squad, Ken Finch, says, at one stage, there was even a ''glut'' in illegal arms driving down prices on the black market.

Hard work by his squad, including a state-wide audit of every licensed firearm owner and significant busts of importation syndicates, helped to push the price back up to about $15,000, yet he says there are still far too many illegal handguns available.

''Our intel, particularly during last year … indicated there are a lot of handguns out there,'' Detective Superintendent Finch says. ''There seemed to be an inordinate number come on to the market very quickly.''

An analysis carried out by police found handguns were used in 88 per cent of gun crimes in the past 12 months. For public-place shootings, that increased to 94 per cent.

At the same time, of the 632 firearms stolen from legal gun owners in NSW over the past year, only 10 per cent were handguns, indicating the guns are coming onto the market by other means.

Last March, three people were charged after Australian and German detectives smashed an international gun-smuggling syndicate that was being run, in part, from a suburban southern Sydney post office.

It is alleged up to 300 Glock pistols were imported over 12 months through the postal system.

A German gun dealer had been duped by the trio, who purported to be authorised gun buyers and ordered individual parts in separate packages and assembled them using instructions found on the internet.

While most of the guns were recovered by police, at least seven have been used in drive-by incidents in Sydney.

Finch says it was difficult for Customs to detect and intercept such packages containing nondescript metal, however the Sylvania Waters Post Office investigation had taught them a lot.

''That case was a lesson for us about how people do things and how we could be better at detecting things,'' he says. ''The reality is that the internet played a large part. You can order them online and they will be dispatched overnight. Some of the weapons we were aware of in February 2012 had only been manufactured in November 2011. That's how quickly they get here.''

Police have continually reassured the public the shootings are targeted rather than indiscriminate hits at the public, but the damage done to the surrounding communities runs deep.

Witnesses have been been left distressed and disturbed, much of the Middle Eastern community has been tarnished with the same brush, and families have been left to mourn the loss of their young sons, cousins and fathers.

One poignant line from a mother said it all when Bachir ''Barry'' Arja, a 28-year-old petty criminal with drug links, was shot dead outside his mother's Punchbowl home last month.

''So sad we are losing all our young men,'' she posted on a tribute Facebook page.

Rifi says the community was going to ''funeral after funeral'' and were fed up with what it perceived as a wider public view the shootings were not a problem as long as it remained a case of Middle Eastern men killing Middle Eastern men.

''Everyone else has been desensitised to our community,'' he says. ''Our young people are being buried at a very young age and we have been going to funeral after funeral. It's getting worse on a day-by-day basis.''

There is widespread discontent within the community at police supposedly ''taking a step back''. Rifi says officers know who the troublemakers are and police need to give assurances they are out on the street not sitting behind desks and hiding behind media releases.

''The racial profiling demonises every law-abiding citizen in the Middle Eastern community and makes us look like criminals,'' Rifi says.

If the problem is not addressed, one underworld figure in south-western Sydney warns, the gun violence will intensify. He likens Punchbowl and Bankstown to ticking time-bombs that will ''erupt pretty soon''.

Kaldas assures the public police are working around the clock to stop the shootings. Police seized 6900 guns last financial year and 7100 already this financial year.

He says Operation Spartan and the anti-bikie strike forces Raptor and Kinnarra have made 2136 arrests and laid 5761 charges.

However, he has pleaded with the community for more help.

Police have encountered a ''wall of silence'' since the shootings began, not only from the perpetrators and their families but also the community, who are scared to come forward with evidence, and victims, who are too are involved in their own illegal activities, police say.

In stark contrast, the victim of a shooting in Auburn last Sunday co-operated with police allowing detectives to arrest three men involved within three days.

''My appeal is to those who know where the guns are being kept to let us know where the guns are and we can get those guns out of the hands of those who use them so recklessly,'' Kaldas says.

In Cabramatta, the police eventually won. Social disorder, racism, drug epidemics and shootings gave way to a multicultural community largely at peace. Few remnants of the crime gangs that terrorised the area remain.

''They're either shot dead, in jail or have settled down and are family men trying to earn a living,'' Small says.

Senior police say all it took was one or two brave community members to come forward in Cabramatta and the whole thing unravelled.

Similarly, the Telopea Street gun battles of 1998-2001 eventually settled when key players were imprisoned and the police clawed back with ''in-your-face policing''.

Mohammad Dib, who spent eight years in jail for car rebirthing and his role in trying to cover up his brother Mustapha's role in a murder on Telopea Street, told Fairfax Media late last year of his regret they were just ''young guys misled by older guys''.

''If I worked legitimate like I do now since day one, I'd have more money in the bank than a life of crime,'' he says. ''I've got nothing and jail is the worst place ever. It's not worth it.''

Small says most men involved in gun violence in Sydney's past eventually just grew out of it, however the cycle continues. ''It can be turned around,'' he says. ''But it is always this problem with the first and second generation trying to get a quid.''

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Tania, a mother of three, watched as Yehya Amoud, 27, was shot dead in a drive-by shooting in October last year. Amoud and his friend Bassam Hijazi were sitting in a silver Mercedes-Benz outside her home on Greenacre Road at 1.20pm when a man opened fire on the pair in an internal gang dispute.

''My kids usually play out there but we were leaving to go out that day. As we walked out the front, my neighbour started screaming. I saw smoke coming out of the bonnet of the car and assumed there was just something wrong with the car so I walked right up to him.

''He was kneeling down on the ground in the praying position. I grabbed him by the arm and said 'Hey, hey, you OK? What's wrong, you all right?' The other guy was screaming at him to get back in the car. I'm shaking him saying 'what's wrong' and then his eyes just rolled back and I saw the blood running down his shoulder and I thought 'Oh my god, there is something more to this'. People were running at me from each direction screaming to move away so I called an ambulance. I don't know him personally but I'll never forget him. I've got a boy whose almost his age and I just think it could have been him.

''The police didn't move him until 9.30pm that night in front of kids and families. These kids are traumatised enough without having to look outside their window and see a body there.

''I'm getting counselling and I've been on valium for [the] first time in my life. I shake a lot when I think about it. My little kids saw him dying in our front yard. Every time we hear a bang, we freeze and we wonder what it is. Every time the kids look at the news and hear another shooting, they look at me and say, 'are they going to come back to us?'''